Review ~ Goddess of Mercy (2003 drama) #玉观音 (#孙俪)

Goddess of Mercy (玉观音) is Sun Li's debut drama.  Well, technically she's been in at least one previous series before but that's as an extra and it's a non-speaking part.  This is the fourth series starring Sun Li that I have ever watched.  By this time I am already a huge admirer of this excellent actress.  It only took one series and that's Nothing Gold Can Stay (那年花開月正圓).  I still hope to do a post on that series but that might take quite a bit of some time and so I thought I would do something that I think I might find easier.

I am trying to watch everything Sun Li has ever done to get a full understanding of her evolution into the exceptional actress that she is today.  So there's no place better to start than by watching her award winning debut performance.  This is the performance that heralded the arrival of a star-in-the-making which by default makes it an important series for anyone who is interested in Sun Li's progress as an actress.

Goddess of Mercy is based on a novel by Hai Yan who also produced this series.  A more internationally known film starring Vicki Zhao and Nicholas Tse was also made in the same year.  As far as I can tell, most of the English reviews online are about the film and there are none on the drama starring Sun Li.  So I have decided to write a simple one, with the focus on Sun Li of course, since she's the reason why I decided to watch this series and write a review / analysis on it.

For those who wish to attempt to watch Sun Li's old dramas, I must give you some words of warning.  A lot of these older series have a relatively old fashion way of telling their stories.  The pacing is SLOW, even Mainland Chinese series these days are paced quite a bit faster.  Its especially hard for those of us who grew up on a diet of Western styled storytelling to get use to.  I grew up on a hybrid of American and British dramas as well as local Chinese dramas, TVB dramas and the occasional Japanese and Australian dramas and the even more occasional Mainland Chinese drama, so I am somewhat able to deal with it without getting too frustrated.

That said, if you're a serious Sun Li fan, I think Goddess of Mercy is worth watching just simply for her.  For an actress who had no previous formal training in acting prior to this drama, she's very watch-able and she put in superb performances in several key scenes in the series which would make your heart ache for her.  Of course she's not as impressive as she is now, which is to be expected.  She sometimes lacks a little subtlety and restrain.  Also, sometimes her transitions can be less than smooth and her eyes also don't always speak as much as they do in her later series, especially the scenes that don't require bigger emotion BUT that said, you can see that even in her début series, Sun Li has got the makings of being at the very least a very good actress.

The following section is pretty much spoiler free because if you read various reviews on the film adaptation of this novel, it pretty much gives you the same information.  I will place spoiler warnings later in the post if necessary.

Tong Dawei as Yang Rui

The story is told to us in a series of mostly longish flashbacks interspersed between Yang Rui's (Tong Dawei) present day story. Yang Rui used to be a brash and arrogant Lothario who likes the easy life.  His extravagant lifestyle is being bankrolled by his female boss at work.  While he feels a little bored and suffocated by this, he's not bothered enough to try and break the relationship off.  But one day he meets An Xin (Sun Li).  She works in the Taekwondo Club that he's taking lessons at.  Eventually the two will hook up and she will tell him her tragic backstory.  For those who are only in it for Sun Li, she makes her first appearance halfway through the second episode.  You can skip the first episode if you like because it's pretty boring.  It's just Yang Rui moping around in Canada and taking forever to finally tell this girl that he can't marry her.  They actually repeat a good number of these scenes again in the last episode.  So if you know the gist of the first episode, you can pretty much just fast forward those scenes in the last episode.

Sun Li learnt Taekwondo for this role and
was apparently quite good at it.

This series suffers from a few problems.  The most glaring one is how slow and tedious this series begins and ends.  I really don't think we needed an entire episode detailing how uninterested Yang Rui seems to be in his impending marriage to a Canadian Chinese woman, nor do I think we needed to spend so much time detailing just what a cad he is.  And we really don't need to see so many scenes in episode one in the last episode yet again too.  Yang Rui was also quite unlikeable in the beginning which made it hard for me to understand how and why a person like An Xin would fall for him.  Honestly, a lot of Yang Rui's scenes feel kind of bland, especially the bits with him wandering around looking for An Xin , after his return from Canada.  Tong Dawei, the actor who plays Yang Rui, was also unable to circumvent the inherent blandness of his sections of the story nor was he able to inject any charm into his disagreeable character in the beginning.

Aside from pacing problems and wasted screen time, I also had issues with some of the logic in the last section of the series.  I know they need a final confrontation or a final resolution but the circumstances that led to it are not very well explained.  Some of the characters make very strange and terribly foolish decisions that I'm not sure normal people would make which kind of undermined what you feel should be proper character progression.

An Xin in uniform

But the series isn't without its merits.  It really gets going when An Xin tells her back-story.  She used to be a police woman in a drug enforcement unit in Nande (南德), Yunnan.  She was engaged to Zhang Tie Jun (Fang Bin), a journalist, who lived miles away from where she was stationed when she meets a young and exciting young man called Mao Jie (Peter HO Rundong).


The three men in An Xin's live, Yang Rui, Mao Jie and Tie Jun.

Feeling lonely, she has an intense but brief affair with him.  It turns out this young man comes from a family that deals drugs.  Both An Xin and Mao Jie hide what they actually do from each other which leads to devastating consequences for both of them.  During a drug sting, an undercover An Xin meets Mao Jie again and he's captured, his home is raided and his father is killed in the process.  Both his mother and him are put on trial but he manages to get set free because his past relationship with An Xin throws the evidence against him in doubt.  His mother, however, gets the death penalty. After his release Mao Jie and his brother return to take revenge on An Xin and in the process Tie Jun, now her husband, is killed and she barely escapes to safety with her child.  By the time Yang Rui first meets her in Beijing, An Xin has a new identity and is on the run from Mao Jie.

This entire backstory is quite absorbingly told and Sun Li really shines here. There are several scenes in her backstory that stuck in my head.  One is a sequence of scenes that ends with An Xin barely escaping from Mao Jie and his brother.  Tie Jun, who had discovered via DNA testing that his son isn't biologically his, comes to Nande to confront An Xin, return the child to her and break off their relationship.  An Xin desperately pleas with Tie Jun before Mao Jie and his brother attack, kills Tie Jun and forces An Xin to escape with her child.

Sun Li's acting in this sequence is particularly memorable for me.  She has a frantic look in her eyes as she desperately grabs and shakes her husband's body in the hopes that he could be moved to change his mind.  Then there is that frenzied barefoot dash across the river and her collapsing in near exhaustion in a police post in the vicinity.  The way she moved her body in that sequence and the way she lets all the strength out of her body as she stumbles and collapses at the end; it's very good.  I've seen lots of on-screen running, stumbling and collapsing but few come close to Sun Li's in this sequence.  She really looked like she was at the end of her strength.

 

I do have to give lots of bonus points to Ding Hei and the production team here.  The escape across that river was very nicely edited.  Lots of quick cuts, jump cuts, varied angles, shaking camera, nice lighting, good music and a great idea to mix in An Xin's laboured breathing half way through the sequence.  The quick cuts, constantly moving and shaking camera gives the visuals a sense of the panic the character must be feeling.  This is accentuated by An Xin's ragged and heavy breathing, as though all she can hear is her own desperation and panic.

The subsequent scenes of her in the hospital are kind of interesting.  Not just for Sun Li's performance, which is pretty good, but also because Ding Hei chose to do some intriguing things.  After seeing Tie Jun's body in the morgue and learning about his death, An Xin collapses.  Just after An Xin awakens, she's surrounded by a big group of people and the camera does a sweeping pan across all of them.  I think there must have been about ten or so people surrounding her bed.  That's so strange.  Do people like stand around staring at an unconscious person waiting for the moment she awakens?  Then there is the overhead MS of An Xin in the hospital bead and the pull up till the humans standing around her bed look kind of exaggerated.



I'm not sure why Ding Hei decided to do that.  Maybe he was trying to show that disorienting moment when one awakens from a deep slumber?  Or maybe he was tying to visually portray that surreal feeling one has when one first learns of the death of a love one or that moment when one knows but doesn't want to believe what is happening to them. Whatever his reasons, I think it's pretty effective.



I must give a thumbs up to the baby they used in the series. This boy is such a good tempered child.  They passed him from person to person and he didn't even struggle.  I also kept starring at the footage of An Xin's escape in the river.  I'm not sure if they used a dummy for the baby in some shots but in some shots it seems like they did use this child and he didn't seem too upset.  Unfortunately, the resolution of the footage is not terribly good so I can't be certain that they did use the child but if they did, then I have to say I'm quite amazed since this is something that they will probably never do in Hollywood.

There is another sequence which I found quite memorable.  The authorities have brought Tie Jun's mother to Nande without yet breaking the news that her son was already dead to her.  As she waits and questions the authorities as to the condition of her son, An Xin's superior, Captain Pan (Du Yuan) brings her to the room presumably to try and soften the blow for Tie Jun's mother or to perhaps bring her some comfort.  What no one knows at that point in time is that Tie Jun's mother already knows about An Xin's affair with Mao Jie and that the child is not her son's.  The ensuing scene is chaotic and heartbreaking as An Xin tries to find mutual comfort with her mother-in-law but is instead rejected and literally thrown aside by Tie Jun's mother.



Aside from some fine acting by both Sun Li and the actress who plays her mother, I kind of like how Ding Hei directed and edited this scene too.  An Xin is always shown in a more submissive position than Tie Jun's mother.  She's always lower and is often thrown around quite violently by his mother too.  There are lots of jump cuts, there's also the deliberate breaking of the traditional continuing editing rules, repeated shots and the constantly moving camera is deliberately chaotic.  However, this chaos is juxtaposition against numerous dissolves, slow-mo shots and a sorrowful tune which seems to want to extend time and reinforce the focus on An Xin's despair and desperation.  The audience was always suppose to sympathise with An Xin which is pretty important because she is one of the main protagonist of this drama and, at this point in time, it was her imprudent actions that led to this moment.  So the drama needs to be very clear that in spite of her ill-considered actions, she is still a character that the audience can like and can sympathise with.



There is, however, an entire dream sequence right after the above scene that I has me baffled.  After that emotionally exhausting meeting with her mother-in-law, An Xin is physically hauled out of the room and she pretty much just collapses yet again.  While she's still unconscious she has this whole dream sequence where an out-of-focus Tie Jun walks backwards into the trees and she slow jogs through the woods with mirrors and reflections of her and Tie Jun.  I mean it's interesting and all but I don't know what it's suppose to mean and how it adds to the story.  If anyone ever watches this drama and would like to discuss this with me, I would be very happy to. :)

Caution: SPOILERS

A little later after this, Mao Jie and his brother will continue to try and take revenge on An Xin and she's forced to change her identity and leave Nande.  She'll first go to Beiqiu where there will be a couple of unhappy incidences which will finally lead her to bring her son, now named Xiao Xiong, to Beijing where she will meet Yang Rui.  Yang Rui will change into responsible husband material over the course of his relationship with her.

After Yang Rui is framed by his former lover and imprisoned for a while, An Xin will spend a great deal of money and effort to get his released and the two love birds decide to get married.

Now this is the part where the script kind of fails me.  I'm not that familiar with China's laws and ways of doing things, especially during the time this particular drama was set in but even then there are some things that don't make sense to me.  I know that An Xin's undercover identity is actually He Yanhong and in order to get married, they had to go to Beiqiu to get her paperwork sorted out.  However, there is a mess up at the authorities and the officer who helped to set up her undercover identity is no longer in Beiqiu so them getting married wasn't going to be a straightforward affair.  Now this is where it gets a bit baffling, why for goodness sakes would they be so impatient that they would risk going to Nande to hasten the paperwork?

It's only been about over a year to two since An Xin had to flee Nande.  The child and her are safe in Beijing even though she's not using her undercover name any more.  There is also no indication that Mao Jie and his brother have stopped seeking revenge.  So any normal person would not risk themselves and their love ones by going to Nande.  Yang Rui returns to being an insistent childish brat, An Xin is more foolish than she's ever been and even Captain Pan seems to not take the matter that seriously.  He may have left An Xin a gun when he left the inn that day that Mao Jie and his brother attack the couple but he didn't actually tell them to get the hell out of town ASAP or stay low and in your hotel till the next train.  At least, I just didn't feel that he, or anyone else for that matter, had any real sense of urgency.



While one of the things I did like about the parts of the story that take place in Nande was that that we get to see some of the culture of the area, still this return trip seems unnecessarily dangerous.  On the return trip to Nande, there is a water festival bit that was quite interesting and reflective of the Indochinese and Thai influence in the area.  BUT even though I enjoyed seeing images of it, I couldn't help asking myself over and over again, why would they put themselves and the child in danger.  It's almost like they were asking for it.

And of course Mao Jie will spot An Xin in the crowd and of course he will be able to track her to the inn where she was staying in.  In the process Yang Rui is beaten to a pulp, Mao Jie's brother dies, Xiao Xiong is first kidnapped and then killed by Mao Jie and the stage is set for the final confrontation.  While resolution is good and often necessary in a script, still the way we get there feels forced and not a natural progression of the story.



Sun Li does have a scene in this section which is pretty good  After Captain Pan tells her that the child is dead, she wails in Captain Pan's arms.  It's really quite moving.  I watched an interview on YouTube where they talk about this scene.  It seems that after Sun Li  had signed with Hairun Media, she was put into a training class where they learnt various skills in performance and TKD (taekwondo).  I don't know why TKD is part of the training but anyway, after learning TKD for a few months, she seemed quite adept at it and so they told her that they might want to cast her in Goddess of Mercy.  However, the director also told her that if she didn't work hard, they could replace her any time.  So she learnt TKD, driving and swimming etc for the series.

One day, the director asked Sun Li's teacher to let Sun Li perform a scene from the series.  It's the scene where she talks to Mao Jie and tells him that the child is his.  Sun Li said that during that rehearsal, she simply couldn't cry because she didn't know how to act then.  She didn't have any particular feelings then and had to force herself to cry, telling herself that she had to cry, if she didn't she won't get this chance.  So while telling herself she had to cry over and over again in her head, she managed to cry just a little bit.  This interview is pretty interesting and even if you can't understand Chinese, I feel it's worth a watch just to see the difference between this early rehearsal that apparently got her the part and the final performance that made it on-screen.

CLICK ME
Happily they recorded this rehearsal. Start watching at
approx 21:45 mins in.

Talk about grabbing your chances while you can!  Because apparently, it was this performance that made Ding Hei decide that he was set on using her for the series and the rest, as they say, is history. :)



Anyway, after Yang Rui recovers, An Xin returns to Beijing with him.  While she's recovered physically from the injuries she suffered during the final confrontation with Mao Jie, she's emotionally broken.  After all the trauma that she's been through, An Xin is not just grieving but she's clearly also suffering from survivor's guilt and I think that's the main reason why she left Yang Rui and returns to the battle front of drug enforcement in Yunnan.  I actually did like this part of the script because her reasons are reasonable.

If you're in this only for Sun Li, you can pretty much just skip the rest after An Xin leaves because after that we get a whole lot of Yang Rui looking for her and I have to admit that I find most of his scenes without An Xin or Zhong Ning or his buddy, quite boring, slow and unnecessary.  His story is actually the least interesting bit of this drama even though he is pretty much the main narrator.  It's really An Xin's story that's the most interesting and Sun Li's acting, even though rough around the edges, is very engaging.

I'll just summarise the ending here for those who wish to save time and skip the Yang Rui bits at the end.  When Yang Rui reaches Nande again, he will be brought to An Xin's grave where he'll be told that she died in a drug operation.  However, Captain Pan will meet him privately after that and he will give him a piece of jade that's carved in the image of Kuanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.  This is a necklace that shows up periodically in the series and is a piece of jade that An Xin wears around her neck.  Captain Pan will tell Yang Rui that An Xin is still alive but she's still working undercover.  An Xin had asked Captain Pan to give Yang Rui her Goddess of Mercy necklace and to tell Yang Rui to forget her.  Yang Rui will eventually return to Beijing where he will continue to work hard and wait for the day when he hopes An Xin might return to him.

END OF SPOILERS

This took longer than I expected and once again I wrote way more than I intended. Hahahaha!!!  Nothing has changed, I'm still as verbose as ever and I still often get carried away when I write. :)

In conclusion, I feel that if you are a Sun Li fan, this is a drama that is worth watching for her performance.  If you take into account that this is her first real acting gig, she was really extremely good.  There is also the basis of an interesting story here and if you can sit through some of the boring Yang Rui portions and if you can get used to its slower pacing, there is a relatively enjoyable story in there.

Du Yuan who plays Captain Pan is also pretty good.  He's suitably stoic where necessary and he is very believable and likeable as An Xin's superior with a heart.  Peter Ho also plays his Mao Jie with enough charm that you understand why An Xin could have been so careless with her dealings with him when they first became friends.  He's probably less bad boy charming than Nicholas Tse but he handled his role well.  I actually liked the actress who played Yang Rui's female superior Zhong Ning (Hai Qing).  She really suited that role.

If you're not a Sun Li fan, then I'm hesitant to recommend this series to you.  I feel that the series does feel dated.  It's a 2003 series which was shot in 2002.  The production values are okay but aren't as high as recent Mainland series.  The pacing is also on the slow and deliberate side, even Mainland Chinese series don't tell their stories this slowly these days.  So if you are more used to higher production values and a more modern or western way of telling a story visually, it might be distracting.  This series was very popular in China when it was first released but I'm not sure if it would have travelled well outside of China then and it is less likely to travel well outside of China now.  

I'm actually quite curious about the film version of this story.  The film version is directed by Ann Hui who is one of the most important names in Hong Kong New Wave cinema.  In addition to Ann Hui, it also stars some quite popular stars of that time which is why there is way more information on this film in English than the drama.  I might watch the film just to see how Ann Hui dealt with the source material.  I'm a little ambivalent about her films.  I feel she has hits and misses but she's still a director that I am quite willing to watch, so I will probably check the film out when I have time.  I would like to read the book too but I think that maybe too ambitious because I'm not sure if I will have time to do it since I read pretty slowly in Chinese.  But we'll see. :)

Alrighty, that's it from me for now.  Hopefully I will one day get to the rest of Sun Li's work one day.  But this is kind of time consuming and I'm terrible at being succinct so we'll see. :P

For other Reviews of Sun Li's work, please head over to this page. CLICK ME.  There are links to other reviews and comments on her other work as well.